Standards of Practice

Our law office is dedicated to the highest levels of professionalism in immigration law practice. Clients can expect personalized and efficient representation at all stages of the visa petition process. We adopt a "zero risk" approach to the application throughout the petition process. As a result, no Fiancé(e) Visa application made through our office has ever been denied.

Our office takes as much work out of the client's and fiancée's hands as possible. We do so by following these principles:

Full Service
We believe that the client deserves the highest level of professional legal service for their attorney fee. We don't just prepare the USCIS petition for you, we also manage the case during the far trickier Embassy phase, where the fiancée is preparing for a live and potentially difficult interview. In our experience, the Embassy phase is where most potential problems with the visa arise.

Specialization
Our focus on the K-1 Fiancé(e) Visa allows us to handle every aspect of the case more efficiently and more effectively. We've been hired by over a dozen attorneys, including a Family Law Professor, to handle their own personal Fiancé(e) Visa petitions. Lawyers in particular recognize the advantages of specialization in most fields of law.

Minimize Risk
We control as much of the case as possible so as to drive the risk of denial of the visa down to "0". None of our office's K-1 visa petitions have been denied, and 99% of our clients' fiancees have been approved on their first visit to the Embassy. Compare this with the statistic provided to John Roth while in the Moscow U.S. Embassy that of the 400+ visa interviews scheduled in Moscow during each month in Summer 2000 only approximately 200 visas were issued.

Reduce The Waiting Time
Controlling the case from start to finish allows our office to reduce to an absolute minimum the amount of time waiting for a visa. We typically get fiancées into the Embassy for the interview months sooner than the embassies' quoted waiting times.

Reduce Stress
We want to minimize, for both the client and fiancée, the time spent, the aggravation, and the worry at a sensitive time in their lives when they are more concerned about preparing for the start of their new life together than about fighting government bureaucracies.

A Helping Hand
We are keenly aware that fiancées in particular are typically very nervous while awaiting their visa (due to their own experiences with bureaucracies, and the horror stories they have often heard from their countrymen who have attempted to get a U.S. visa). Thus, the fiancée is not left to "fend for herself" once the USCIS has approved the petition and the U.S. Embassy has taken charge of the case. All the fiancée's embassy documents are prepared in our New York office. More important, we stay actively involved with the fiancee through the Embassy phase until the visa is issued.

We Don't Waste a Day
We recognize that every day is precious in reuniting our client with his fiancee. That's why we send by e-mail, on the very same day that the client retains us, our questionaire and 16 page instruction letter to the client so that he can begin providing us with biographical information and supporting documentation immediately. We also contact our overseas assistant immediately so that the fiancée can be interviewed at her earliest availability. All of our office functions are faster and more reliable thanks to a unique custom-designed K-1 visa case management program developed by our office over the last four years. More important than anything else, however, we have spent years mastering the law and practice in this area, and have developed relationships with key personnel, so that we can get our clients' cases though the USCIS and Embassy bureaucracies as soon as humanly possible.

Embassy Interview Preparation
One of our legal assistants in Moscow or Warsaw or Kiev will meet the fiancée prior to her Embassy interview to make certain that she is relaxed, confident, and fully prepared for the Embassy interview. For fiancées going to other embassies, one of our U.S., staff calls the fiancée directly to prepare her for the interview. Consequently, you will not have to travel to the Embassy city to provide moral or other support for your fiancée as she awaits her interview (the fiancées often request this, but in virtually every case they have dropped the request once we have advised them that a more experienced assistant will be on hand to assist them).

Accessible Attorneys
We could be the best attorneys in the world, but if we're overworked, or you can't reach us because we're busy with other clients, on vacation, traveling, etc., then we're not really giving you the best possible representation. That's why we have two full-time lawyers in our U.S. office serving approximately 300 cases per year. So, 2 lawyers x 50 work weeks x 40 hrs/wk = 4000 total work hours per year, divided by 300 cases, leaves over 13 attorney hours per case. Two full-time paralegals in our New York office and three assistants overseas adds to our depth. This gives us ample time to ensure that each client and each case gets the careful attention it deserves.

We Save You Time and Money
We save you telephone expenses, translator costs, travel costs, mailing and faxing costs because we are contacting your fiancee in her native language rather than you making the numerous phone calls yourself. Furthermore, we typically save each client hundreds and even thousands of dollars in travel costs, by knowing the lowest cost travel providers and by eliminating the need for the client to travel to the Embassy city to support the fiancee. Perhaps most important, we allow you to concentrate on what you do best, your own job, so that you can optimize your job performance and income rather than being distracted from your own specialty by trying to learn and master a whole new field of expertise.

Fixed Fee
Our retainer fee is a true "fixed fee". We have never billed a client for any additional services, no matter what complexities arose, except for the $30 charge for translating a document. In addition, in the rare cases where the client decides not to go forward with the visa for personal reasons, we remit the client a pro rata refund calculated by mutual agreement between attorney and client.

Ethics in Advertising
Our firm does not pay any commissions, kickbacks, or advertising fees to matchmaking firms, even though several firms have asked us for them, and we have lost several firms who initially recommended us based strictly on merit and reputation but later demanded large kickbacks after other firms had offered large fees. We have no regrets. The Attorney’s Code of Professional Responsibility explicitly prohibits the paying of referral fees. We have even refused to pay advertising fees, because firms typically demand fees so many times in excess of their standard advertising fee that the “advertising fee” is nothing but a veiled kickback scheme. For examples of two highly ethical firms that have refused to solicit attorney fees and have recommended our firm based solely on merit, see Antonio's One True Love Network and Confidential Connections.